Photography Blog

“I thought you photographers hated Instagram?”

That was a statement/question (or as I like to call them, “questmients”) posed to me by one of the interns assisting The Dallas Morning News and Hearst Corporation publications during the Democratic National Convention earlier this month in Charlotte, N.C.

Said “questmient” came as I was having a conversation with her about a colleague from Getty Images, Justin Sullivan (more on him in a bit), who was doing some really neat work with his iPhone during the conventions and sharing some of the photos on Instagram.

Wait, before I go any further, do you know what Instagram is?

Yes? Move on.

No? Read on …

According to the copy on their very sparse site, Instagram is ” … a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your photos with friends and family.”

It goes on to say that after you take a photo with your mobile phone, you can use the app’s many filters to “transform” your images, post to Instagram, from which it can be shared on the social network of your choice — Facebook, Twitter, etc.

OK, now where was I.

Where this intern got the idea that we photographers hate the app is beyond me; even she didn’t remember. While I agree that there has been some blowback on cell phone images in photojournalism the last few years, “hate” would be a strong word.

It’s been said before — by both myself and others on this blog, and around the Internet at large — but cell phone photography has reached a fever pitch in the last few years.

A image I made on my cell phone while waiting for Mitt Romney to arrive at Love Field. Downtime at newspaper assignments is a popular time to make Instagram-type photos.

Just from my own experience, if I were to go back to any photos I shot at a major event say, before 2010, I might see roughly 45-50 percent of people in the background holding up cell phone cameras (or point-and-shoot cameras, for that matter). These days, the number is probably well over 90, and you can add to cell phones and PnS’s iPads and other such tablets.

As the joke goes in my business, everyone is a photographer now.

Cell phone photography is nothing new in my profession. In fact, I’ve written about it several times since we started our staff photography blog back in June 2010. We’re “shooters” and documentarians by nature — give us another tool to freeze a frame of something pretty, poignant or amusing, and we’ll gladly snap away.

We photographers love inside jokes. Here, I took a photo of one of many "gaffers tape mods" I'm forced to make when gear breaks at the last minute. Gaffers tape is my anti-drug.

What’s changed over the years is quality, quantity, and most importantly, ease of distribution. To that last point, something like Instagram, and its myriad predecessors, really have facilitated the rise of cell phone photography in recent years. They basically became their own social networks — places for us to share and receive tidbits of life and such, but this time in a mostly visual form.

To my mind, Instagram has really been the driving force in that. Since I got back into it earlier this summer, I’ve found a new way to reconnect with fellow photographer friends, and meet some new ones. I can sort of preview their work as it comes — I get an idea of where they are and what kinds of assignments they are shooting based on what they post to Instagram. Likewise, because, as I said, a lot of these folks are friends and acquaintances of mine, I can keep up with stuff in their lives — kids, pets, you name it.

And of course I don’t just follow — nor am I only followed by — other shooters; family and friends get (and give) regular views, too.

Something I saw while wandering the streets of Seattle, Washington with a coworker while looking for dinner the night before the Dallas Cowboys 27-7 loss to the Seahawks. I think this monkey man put a hex on the team.

A man dressed as a human kidney Cowboy outside of Dallas City Hall. I cannot make this stuff up, and the beauty of Instagram is, others can see I can't, either.

Again, with the notion of sharing more personal photos on Instagram, I titled this image simply, "My cats are weird." Truthfully they both are, even though you only see one here.

The simple fact is sharing a photo is just as fun as making one. While I’m one of those people who says they mostly shoot “for themselves” (and that is true, to a large degree), what use is any “art” if you don’t get it in front of a few eyeballs now and then. Maybe it’s our human nature to need some form of attention, or a more genuine desire to be more open about our lives. I don’t know, and honestly, I don’t rightly care. I like looking at photos — good ones, bad ones, and everything in between. The social networking aspect of something like Instagram or its competitors (I’m sure there are some, right?) suits me just dandy.

Lastly, so as not to make this all about me or what I think, I thought I’d share the work of some fellow “Instagramers” whom I’ve following of late. These are three people who came to mind when I first started thinking about this blog post. They each represent something different about what’s gotten me so interested in the social network aspect of cell phone photography.

Justin Sullivan

“Sully,” as he’s known to some folks, is a photojournalist for Getty Images whose byline you’ve no doubt seen from pictures taken all over the world. Suffice to say, he is an editorial photography stud. Most recently, he’s been covering the presidential campaigns. Like I said at the beginning of this post, I was really liking the work he shared from the conventions. It was different work — hyper-visual, quirky, and I liked too that he kept it different from what he shot with his “real” cameras and moved on the wire. It had that great “snapshot aesthetic” I always love.

More too is his delivery. In addition to the Instagram app — and posting on Facebook and the like — he uses a service called “Instagrid” that organizes and shares his images on an internet browser, and not just your smartphone of choice.

A former DMN shooter and the person I most want to be when I grow up, Allison has been rocking iPhoneography well before the concept took off. In fact, years back, she started culling all the images she shared with folks on the Internet into “zines” (small, independently produced magazines with limited runs) that she sold to anyone who’d buy one. Allison has a lot of followers in this business (rightfully so; she’s the best!), so the zines sell fast and are proudly displayed in a lot of photographers’ collections of books and magazines.

[PS -- if you scroll down and look to the right, you'll see a link to the "Store" section where you can buy said zines. Get 'em while they're hot!]

Brad Mangin

Brad’s about as well known in the sports photography business as you can get — been around a while, done it all, and done it all well. He’s also a big personality and a kind soul, so he’s made a lot of friends in our community. Brad’s forte is baseball photography, and recently he’s started to set down the long glass to document subtle, more intimate moments at MLB games, all with his iPhone. Like Justin’s and Allisons’s work, they are full of great visuals and a lot of levity. In fact you probably saw a bunch of Brad’s work in a recent Sports Illustrated issue — they gave him a pretty large spread.

So anyway, do we hate Instagram? I don’t, and I don’t know many who do. Maybe it’s just the flavor of the month, but it’s still a lot of fun. I’ll enjoy it as long as folks use it — or maybe until I get bored with it one day — and around then something new will come along and I won’t even remember what Instagram was or why I liked it.

It’s the World Wide Web way.

Cheers,

- gerry -

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Photo blog is the official blog of The Dallas Morning News’ Photography staff. Our mission is to create an informal community of readers who are interested in all aspects of still photography and video.